Healing from around the lake

The list is a long one, but a constructive, entertaining, informative one, at that this list of healings that Jesus conducted.

I'm going to take only the ones in Matthew to discuss.  That means we see 32 healings in that Gospel, alone. He healed on the Sabbath. He healed up close and personal. He healed over distances up to 20 miles or so. He healed with a word (unknown), and with spit and mud (again, unknown what He said). He healed with the faith of the individual being key, and he healed where his own faith was the triggering aspect. He healed withered limbs. He brought at least two back from the dead. He healed whole crowds at least once.

Jesus was a healer, and the abundant, incredible grace of God, triggered by the faith of the healer and the faith of the recipient, was enough to change lives.

If you look at the 22nd chapter of Matthew's Gospel, you get a feel for what Jesus was doing in Galilee. Perhaps the sentence that attracts the most attention from me is this one: "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people." Which ones did he heal? EVERY disease and sickness, the scriptures read.

Look, I don't know the how or the why. But I know what I read, and in black type it tells me EVERY disease and sickness was healed. He took care of the lepers. He re-attached bad arms. He healed the blind, the deaf. He was continually going out of his way to make the acquaintance of those who needed full-on healing ... the depth of his own healing, holistic and saving.

 In the 22nd chapter of Matthew's Gospel, we read this story:  Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!”  When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” "Yes, Lord,” they replied.  Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you”; and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.” But they went out and spread the news about him all over that region. While they were going out, a man who was demon-possessed and could not talk was brought to Jesus. ³³ And when the demon was driven out, the man who had been mute spoke. The crowd was amazed and said, “Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.”  But the Pharisees said, “It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons.”

Why? Why then, and clearly not now? Why did he tell some to go and tell others about him, and still others he commanded them to be quiet about the healing?

Jesus lifted up the spirit of a discouraged preacher who retired early because of what happened to him. "In the Pentecostal Evangel church leader George U. Wood writes:

"Have you ever heard a healing take place? I have. I listened to an audiotape of Duane Miller teaching his Sunday school class from the text of Psalm 103 at the First Baptist Church in Brenham, Texas, on January 17, 1993. Duane prematurely retired from pastoring three years earlier because of a virus which penetrated the myelin sheath around the nerves in his vocal cords, reducing his speech to a raspy whisper....

 "Teaching his class that day with a special microphone resting on his lips,
he reaffirmed his belief in divine healing and that miracles had not ended
with the Book of Acts. Listening to the tape, at times you can barely
understand his weakly spoken wheezy words of faith. The miracle happened at verse 4 when he said, "I have had and you have had in times
past pit experiences."

"On the word pit, his life changed—the word was as clear as a bell, in contrast to the imperfect enunciation of the preceding "word past. He paused, startled; began again and stopped. The class erupted with shouts of joy, astonishment and sounds of weeping. God completely healed him as he was declaring the truth in this psalm.